Many residents across the county will already be aware that I have been working for some time to find effective ways to address growing public concerns about problems associated with Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) and the devastating impact they can have in our communities if they’re not properly regulated or kept under control. However, the problem has been largely disregarded by those in power in county hall and is now in danger of coming to a tipping-point in many of our towns and villages.
By way of background, converting a residential property into an HMO is an initiative used by property owners and some private sector landlords to create additional rental income in one individual home by modifying living space to increase the number of tenancies. However, quite few of the more unscrupulous landlords and property owners have taken the opportunity to maximise their rental income by squeezing more individual tenancies into one property and then calling it an HMO.
This isn’t anything new. It’s been around for several years but it’s recently come to the fore in some of our communities, and that would explain the increasing number of pressure groups emerging across the county over the past few months - most of them pressing for the same outcome but with some of the more opportunistic ones using it as a device to create division in our communities.
The practice of converting residential properties into HMOs has picked up pace lately in some of our former industrial communities in East Durham where some private sector landlords and their agents are exploiting this opportunity, simply to maximise the profit they can make from their property. This often leads to disruption in our otherwise settled communities, especially where there is evidence of an increasing number of HMOs in just one or two streets.
To make matters worse once a residential property has been converted into an HMO it is highly unlikely to ever be returned to its original purpose, thereby gradually depriving our communities of a much needed rented-sector housing supply. This essentially locks our next generation out of the housing market in their own villages, leaving many to move away from their friends and families just to get a foot on the housing ladder. In addition, if left unchallenged this can lead to long-term housing market failure and in some cases complete collapse. For that reason alone, from my own personal perspective, this is one of the most damaging aspects of widespread conversion to HMOs.
The impact of HMOs on our communities has been a long time coming. Anyone monitoring changes in the local housing market over the past few years, particularly in the private-rented sector, would have picked up on the opportunity perceived by some landlords to change direction and maximise profit by letting their properties to more tenants than they were ever intended for.
This was in part the reason why Labour members in county hall introduced a Selective Licensing Scheme (SLS) a few years ago. The primary purpose of the SLS was to bring some much-needed regulation to the private-rented sector, but it also gave the council a framework to build up an evidence base and provide a template for dealing with any potential housing issues in the future - such as the risk of a proliferation of HMOs in our East Durham communities and others across the county.
However, apart from deploying the opportunity to further regulate the private-rented sector using the evidence gathered through the SLS, the only way the council can make real progress in tackling local concerns about HMOs is by engaging directly with residents and their communities and then developing policy and modifying the regulatory powers it has to deal with any emerging issues.
Understandably our residents want to hear about solutions to their problems, so if those in power in county hall want to be seen to be doing something about this problem they must start listening to residents and then act decisively to establish effective solutions and allay the concerns of local residents.
Whether they do that by adopting restrictive planning policies that help to remove permitted development rights on HMOs, or whether they properly engage with residents and look to invoke Article 4 Directions either as a Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) or as a stand-alone policy in the forthcoming County Durham Plan review, it's vital that the council demonstrates its understanding of local concerns - and then holds out the prospect of hope and real progress by further regulating the private-rented sector and bringing some much needed stability to our communities.
